With 44 industrial units, operations in 13 countries, including Brazil, and 19,800 employees, French conglomerate Tereos is a global agricultural powerhouse, posting revenues of 4.3bn euros (US$4.2bn) in 2021.
To handle different processes, improve agricultural monitoring, reduce costs and improve relations with suppliers and the procurement chain, the company has invested heavily in the automation and digitalization of operations.
Most of these projects are in Brazil, where Tereos is among the leading sugar cane and ethanol producers.
Continued focus on efficiency and productivity has enabled a 12% increase in the 2021-22 yield. The main focus is supply chain and procurement.
“We are in the process of transforming our BSC and procurement area into a reference, with the help of technology. We started this journey in 2019 as a search for process utilization, optimization, payroll improvements, etc. ., and now we are quite widespread,” João Toqueti, Tereos’ BSC (Business Service Center) and procurement manager in Brazil, told BNamericas.
Toqueti said that of the approximately 290 services in this area, about 140 are already automated to some degree.
Much of the technology deployed by Tereos is developed in-house, but the group also relies on external partnerships. According to Toqueti, an innovation cell was created in the company in June to enhance the development of ideas and projects.
Among the latest tools applied are robotic process automation, a new business intelligence framework, and a new agriculture enterprise resource planning software, provided by Gertec.
“We implemented a very innovative solution for the agricultural area within the sector, which is the Gertec solution. Everything in the cloud, georeferenced, with geospatial tracking. So we know which cane is harvested by which machine in which location ,” said Toqueti.
For BSC, the company uses a ServiceNow platform to monitor the level of service in the area. Tereos will also launch a supply-side platform developed by B2B expert Mercado Eletrônico, according to Toqueti.
“We are doing a major upgrade of [supply] tools so that we can access the market in a more technological way, get data from our supplier’s profile, how they work, the offers they have, etc.
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Cloud
For its front-office operationsTereos relies on the Amazon Web Services cloud, which stores and processes about 70TB of the company’s data.
Information from agricultural equipment in the field is collected through IoT sensors. Images are also generated by drones, satellites, and data from weather stations.
Images captured by drones are stored in the AWS cloud and processed by a neural network. Tereos’ specialists analyzed an average of 30,000 images per 100 hectares planted and trained the algorithm to identify problems, such as weeds in sugarcane fields.
Meanwhile, sensors installed at more than 70 weather stations throughout the pipeline measure humidity, rainfall, temperature, solar radiation, wind direction, and other climate factors that directly affect production.
Data is captured in real-time and stored in the Amazon Redshift cloud data warehouse for further analysis and to correlate time and productivity.
DIGITAL TWIN
Push in Tereos’ digital and analytics Brazil started 2017. It started with a supply chain project involving production, inventory and sales. Subsequently, these became more strategic initiatives in the agricultural, industrial and commercial areas.
In 2018, Tereos selected AWS as its main cloud provider in Brazil and in 2019 launched its industry 4.0 program at the Cruz Alta unit, the group’s largest Brazilian plant, in Olímpia, São Paulo state.
One of the first initiatives developed under the program is a digital twin, a virtual copy of Tereos’ industrial operation. Currently, the model analyzes and correlates about 350 data sources from sensors and other legacy systems, according to Tereos.
Based on data stored in the AWS cloud, such as raw material quality, laboratory data and operational information, the twins predict the amount of sugar in a crop and the energy consumed in its processing, for example.
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A separate solution, a virtual robot, is used to monitor around 30,000 data points collected in real time on the industrial site, triggering alerts for any situation requiring immediate action.
It also sends performance reports throughout the day.
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STARTUPS
Tereos has also collaborated with Brazil’s agribusiness innovation hub AgTech Garage to strengthen its projects and establish connections with key companies in the sector.
The hub currently brings together over 900 startups and around 70 large companies to stimulate and facilitate the development of innovative agribusiness solutions. Tereos’ analytical intelligence team is responsible for the link to the AgTech Garage ecosystem.
“We operate in a complex chain where digital transformation, through technology and data science, is increasingly important for decision-making. That’s why this alliance is so important,” Tereos executive manager of planning and analytics, Andre Margoto, said in a statement.